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October 14, 2003

Big news

Today we're officially announcing the Kay-Tingleff merger! Our individual cash flows are way down but we see a lot of synergy and cost savings resulting from the union. And we love each other a lot.

No date or location set yet but right now May in Ithaca looks like a good possibility.

Breean and I on the Washington coast

Posted by sam at 09:51 PM | Comments (6)

Justices Take Case on Pledge

Justices Take Case on Pledge of Allegiance's Reference to God. I wonder how big an issue this will be in the presidential race...

Posted by sam at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

"Ninety-five percent of the people have to be told what to do, have to be given orders."

The Audio-Animatronic Candidate The Terminator brings Disney politics to life:

The candidate's "town meetings" were open to invited guests only. (Not even a game show retains such tight control of its extras.) Until the final days, "meeting the press" meant spurning the actual press entirely for TV entertainers like Oprah and Jay Leno. Political "dialogue" for Mr. Schwarzenegger meant dialogue akin to that of actors in costume playing Disney cartoon characters: he plucked well-worn tag lines from his films and shuffled them into crowd-pleasing medleys of his greatest hits. A debate? The only one he attended allowed him to deliver more scripted lines, written in response to questions provided in advance; he mouthed them with all the spontaneity mustered by "Abe Lincoln" at the Hall of Presidents in Orlando.
Sorry dad, I haven't had time to read this until now. It was definitely worth the time.

Posted by sam at 02:19 PM | Comments (2)

I'd buy some sun out here

Can Rain Be Bought? Experts Seed Cloud and Seek Answers: Denver has invested more than $1m in cloud seeding in the last two years.

Posted by sam at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

Evolving by Accident, Not

male túngura frog

Evolving by Accident, Not Fitness:

Biologists should learn from life's existential quandaries, he says, but many do not. Instead, they sweep the difficulties under the rug of "adaptationism," the notion that everything about an animal's body and behavior has been honed to enhance its "fitness" or chance of passing on genes.
...
Dr. Ryan calls this "sensory exploitation" — a new behavior that succeeds in evolution because it takes advantage of existing ways of perceiving the world. The same principle causes a female fish of the swordtail species to prefer males with "swords" extending from their bodies. The swords fit the existing tuning of the fish visual system, inherited from some ancestor. A related species, the platyfish, has no swords. But when a male platyfish has a sword sewn onto his tail, platyfish females prefer him.

Posted by sam at 08:49 AM | Comments (1)